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The hostess received him with a bridling favour, rubbing her cheek pleasantly, whilst Udal was seeking to persuade himself that, since the woman was in law no wife of his, he had no need to fear. Nevertheless rage tore him when the doctor, leaning his back against the window-side, talked to the woman.
Just such noondays seem to have gone to the making of the Arabian Nights, in Damascus, Bokhara, or Samarkhand, with their desert roadways, files of camels, wandering horsemen, crystal springs, welling up under the shade of feathery date groves; their wilderness of roses, songs of nightingales, wines of Shiraz; their narrow bazaar paths with bright overhanging canopies, the men, in loose robes and multi-coloured turbans, selling dates and nuts and melons; their palaces, fragrant with incense, luxurious with kincob-covered divans and bolsters by the window-side; their Zobedia or Amina or Sufia with gaily decorated jacket, wide trousers, and gold-embroidered slippers, a long narghilah pipe curled up at her feet, with gorgeously liveried eunuchs on guard, and all the possible and impossible tales of human deeds and desires, and the laughter and wailing, of that distant mysterious region.
She leaned her troubled face against the window-side, her chin resting on her hand, and gave herself up to the old thoughts. "What did Ben say?" she cried suddenly, flying away from the window so abruptly that she involuntarily glanced around to be quite sure that none of her fellow-passengers were laughing at her.
The canary was singing glibly in his cage by the window-side. She threw aside her furs, and, without removing her hat, passed into the bed-chamber at the left of the cosy little boudoir. This was Hetty's room. Her own was directly opposite. On the girl's dressing-table, leaning against the broad, low mirror, stood the unframed photograph of a man.
"Nothing in either," said she; and Violet, with a sigh, turned towards the table. This was an immense affair, made to accommodate itself to the shape of the room, but with a hollowed-out space on the window-side large enough to hold a chair for the sitter who would use its top as a desk. On it were various articles suitable to its double use.
She felt that there was some one sitting on the window-side of her bed, behind the curtain, but she did not care to know who it was; it was even too great a trouble for her languid mind to consider who it was likely to be. She would rather shut her eyes, and melt off again into the gentle luxury of sleep.
The moon no longer shone into the room, and the bed and its occupant were in shadow. "What shall I do, Jack?" said the voice from the darkness. The answer came promptly and clearly from the window-side: "Spot the man, and kill him on sight." "But, Jack?" "He's took the risk!" "But will that bring HER back?" Jack did not reply, but moved from the window toward the door.
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